Independent projects
25% of our time is committed to independent research projects that advance equity and strengthen communities. This work is driven by personal experience, curiosity and desire to understand how policies affect behavior.
These initiatives focus on:
Launching programs for underserved populations
Conducting research to shape equitable policies
Testing new data sets, tools, and technologies for public use
Independent projects let us freely innovate, share knowledge, and provide resources with our community.
Finding your best fit high school
We created this free, easy to use search tool in response to our own frustrating experience in the high school search.
Equitable access to elite public schools
Where do students at elite public schools tend to live and what middle schools did they attend?
Scaling your nonprofit
Add your pricing strategy. Be sure to include important details like value, length of service, and why it’s unique.
Navigating school bureaucracy
At NYC’s 2018 Open Data Conference, we showed how the NYC public school application process may leave out many families because of its complexity. We advocate for greater access and transparency when it comes to public school information.
Public education is a perfect example of how large systems can sometimes unintentionally ignore simple needs.
Eviction Patterns after COVID
We believe in the value of looking at social outcomes from a location perspective. We were interested in exploring trends following the NYC lifting of rent moratoriums after the pandemic. We created maps to provide simple glimpses into the crisis of housing instability using open data provided by New York City, the US Census and other sources.
Delivering new books to kids in need
When COVID shut down schools and libraries, students lost access to reading materials, especially kids from low income homes and those without home computers. Within a few weeks, I organized a give-away of books packs mailed directly to students’ homes, letting them known they weren’t forgotten.
By partnering with Scholastic and with the financial support of schools’ Parent Associations, we shipped hundreds of new books to 195 K-5 grade students at East Village Community Schools and 136 6-8 grade students at (Title 1) Tompkins Square Middle School.